Anthem for the Broken Hearted
by Sailor Juno
Summary: It seems that the further and faster they try and run from each other, the more entangled they become. Divorce is not always the end. Sometimes...it is just the beginning. BreeRex divorce AU, a love story in three parts.
1. Part One: Bree

This is a S1 Bree/Rex AU fic in three parts.

I've written a lot of DH fanfic (mostly Bree/Rex) but this piece is one of my favorites so I thought I'd try and post it elsewhere.

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Disclaimer: Desperate Housewives is not mine and no money is being made from this fanfiction.

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**Anthem for the Broken Hearted**

_Bless the Broken Road (Part One: Bree)_

They really shouldn't be doing this.

She had stood her ground and hadn't forgiven or forgotten the fact that he betrayed her, and finally he had stopped trying to fight her and he had signed the divorce papers. He had moved out and she should have moved on. Divorce is supposed to be the end, the parting, the death that parted them.

It is hard to remember that when his body is pressed to hers, his lips trailing over her jaw and down her neck, and clothing has already been scattered across the room and it is all so familiar.

The irony that they are having better and much more frequent sex since their divorce is not lost on her. Apparently what a marriage counselor couldn't fix, a divorce could, she thinks as she impatiently unbuttons his shirt with practiced fingers.

"Where are the kids?" he mumbles against her skin, sucking on the sensitive spot right above her collarbone. She will have to wear a high-collared sweater for a few days until his marks fade, but she is used to that. By now she is beginning to suspect that he bruises her skin with his kisses and bites on purpose, marking her as his own since she no longer wore a wedding ring to say so.

She rolls her eyes at his stupid question—he has forgotten the basics since he's moved out, or maybe it is just the heat of the moment. Either way, he does not see her make a face, as she has tilted her head back to give him better access to her neck. "School, Rex. They still go there, you know."

"Right," he replies distractedly, and Bree thinks, amused, that he really didn't care too much at the moment, as long as the answer is 'not here'. His hands reach under her thighs, lifting her up against him, and she locks her legs around his hips when her back hits the wall hard. She bites his neck roughly and he seems to both flinch away and lean into her as he moans.

"Did that hurt?" she asks sweetly. "Sorry." She isn't. He deserves it. And oddly enough, he seems to enjoy it, and so she supposes both their purposes are being met. He takes it as some weird kind of foreplay and she is able to get out some of the unmanageable anger that permanently resides in the pit of her stomach—_this _is what it feels like to be betrayed by the one person you trust, _this _is what it feels like to have your heart ripped out and shattered into a million pieces, _this _is loneliness so powerful it is a physical ache.

He responds by sealing her lips with his, still holding under her legs as she clutches his bare shoulders and clenches her legs around him for support, a careful balancing act. She's never imagined that she'd find herself in this position—she wasn't lying when she told Dr. Goldfine that she loved sex, but she is a bit more traditional than to get into it against the wall of her living room. Then again, she never thought she'd find herself divorced after eighteen years of marriage, so she is learning that what she never thought could or would be true often isn't ludicrous at all.

She hates him and she hates herself because she is just like him now, she is _cheating_. Because George Williams is so kind to her and looks at her like she is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. And his conversation is pleasant and so she allows him a few chaste kisses—quick and friendly—and then she comes home and lets her ex-husband take her as though he still had a right to.

She hates him for breaking her and hates that she cannot move on, and yet she still loves him, loves him so much, and her hate and love is just so muddled up that she doesn't know what to do with them or which emotion is stronger and she finally believes the old saying that there is a thin line between love and hatred.

He impatiently pushes her skirt up around her waist and she feels that flare of triumph, that he may have wandered and gone to another woman but in the end he still wants her, in the end he is still hers.

And she tells herself that she is just trying to get him out of her system. She denies to herself that she is still (and always) his, too.

And then he moves into her and her head falls back against the wall and she stops thinking all together. She moans his name instinctively and thinks that when she eventually moves on, as she still pretends to think she will, she will have to be careful with whomever she chooses to share her bed with. Her ex-husband's name falls from her lips far too habitually for her comfort.

She digs her fingernails hard into his shoulder, smiling when she feels him groan appreciatively against her neck, and she threads her free hand through his dark hair, yanking his head back up so she can kiss him, her tongue meeting his before she bits down on his bottom lip and feels a shiver pass through him. He presses her harder into the wall, driving her against it with each hard thrust, and she rakes her fingernails across his back and her mouth is demanding as she tries to reclaim what should have always been hers and only hers.

She smiles coolly as she feels his skin break under her perfectly manicured nails. And with his blood sliding over her fingertips and his breath hot on her face and her skin burning beneath his touch it is almost impossible for her to distinguish where Rex ends and Bree begins. She thinks this must be the product of so many years of marriage—once upon a time she had been Bree Mason but she doesn't know who that girl is anymore, and she does not know how to be anyone other than Bree Van de Kamp. She does not know how to be Bree without Rex, or if there can even _be _a Bree without him.

And she divorced him and threw him out but she knows she'll never really be truly rid of him because his lips are like a permanent brand upon her skin and she can still smell the scent of his aftershave in their bedroom. He flows through her blood. She has forgotten how to not love him.

She moans against his neck when she comes hard, and feels her body go limp, pressed between the wall and Rex and she holds onto him exhaustedly for support until he shudders and follows her, and he leans against her for a moment as he catches his breath.

He manages to maneuver his hands so he is no longer holding her up against the wall but is instead cradling her against his chest, his hands under her knees and around her back, and she tiredly puts her arms around his neck as he carries her over to the couch. She does not resist when he deposits her on the couch, and she responds to his loving kiss as he hovers over her.

She subconsciously relaxes as he plants soft kisses from the corner of her mouth up to her earlobe, ignoring the twisting in her stomach that always follows their—sessions? (She never knows what to call their encounters, ones that are too angry and full of pain to be called lovemaking and far too emotional and binding to simply be called something crude.) She both loves and hates his tender touches after they've finished. They are so similar to the way he touched her when they were newlyweds, when he would whisper to her that he would always be faithful, that he loved her and would love only her until the day he died, and she, like a fool, had believed him.

"Bree…" he breathes into her skin, his forehead damp as he nuzzles her neck. "Bree, I…"

"Don't," she says with sudden clarity. Words that a few months ago she had longed to hear more than any others, the last thing she wants to hear now is that he loves her. Because she had loved him so much that he had owned her, heart, body, and soul, everything she had, everything she was, and the thought of going back to that, scares her. The idea of becoming his again, of what would happen if this didn't work, if she is left alone, heartbroken, once more…she can't. "Don't, Rex."

He sighs and drops his head tiredly onto her shoulder. And she is tired, too. She is tired of hating him too much to open her heart to him again but loving him far too much to let him go. His fingers comb through her hair and she sighs when he buries his face in the red strands and inhales the scent of her shampoo. A memory. She knows every time he hopes she'll ask him to stay, but when she thinks of how much she loves him and knows he loves her, and the feeling of his lips on hers and how he is the only one who can make her feel whole and she is about to say yes, then her mind takes her to the smirk on Maisy's face, to Rex coming in late with another woman's perfume on his coat, to him sleeping on the couch or telling her he is glad she's out of his life or that she sounds like a whore, and then she hates him and cannot trust him again.

She'll never tell him that sometimes she'll bury her face in his pillow or wear one of his nightshirts so that she can pretend he is still there. She'll never tell him that sometimes she almost cries because when Andrew looks at her like _that _or Danielle turns her head _that way_, God, she just sees him reflected in their children and it is too much to bear. She'll never tell him that sometimes, many times, she regrets her decision.

She'll never tell him that every time he touches her she is broken and then healed again.

But she thinks she doesn't have to. Her body and lips and hands speak enough. Just as he never told her that he _always _regrets his decision and yet she knows.

"I love you," he breathes in her ear against her command, and she flinches. "I love you so much."

The tears sting her eyelids and she blinks them back furiously. "You always did have to muddle everything up with emotion," she whispers brokenly and he kisses her again.

She gently pushes him away so that she can get up, trying in vain to smooth down her skirt. It is no use—she'll have to iron it again before she goes to lunch with George. "You need to go," she tells him, glancing up at the clock sitting on the mantle. "I'm going out."

He scowls, his mood darkened as he reaches for his shirt, buttoning it up. "Have a date?" His voice is accusing. "What, with your lame pharmacist again? You two sure are cozy, huh?"

"Not as cozy as you and Maisy were," she says, her voice ice, and he flinches in the truth behind her words. "And it shouldn't matter to you, anyway. We're divorced, in case you've forgotten. You don't get a say in who I date."

"Bree…" And his voice is soft and like a caress again when he gently captures her wrists in his hands. "What are we _doing_?"

She bites her lip. "I don't know," she answers honestly. "But it won't happen again." The words are meaningless by now; she has said them so many times and as he captures her lips in one more kiss, they both know it's false.

It will happen again and again.

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Parts two and three will follow. I hope you enjoyed, please leave some reviews to make me smile.


	2. Part Two: Rex

Part two of three. Thanks to those who have reviewed; if you haven't, please do! 

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Disclaimer: Desperate Housewives is not mine and no money is being made from this fanfiction.

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**Anthem for the Broken-Hearted**

_Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Part Two: Rex) _

The first time is after their third settlement talk, when their lawyers start bringing out the big guns and start talking about child support and alimony and the house and custody. He listens with half an ear and mostly agrees, because he doesn't want a divorce but if there has to be one, he wants for his children and Bree to be provided for, and he absent-mindedly signs the documents without really reading the sum he will have to provide monthly because he cheated on his wife and is letting her have their house and their children. Mostly during that meeting he watches Bree, a task that proves to be immensely difficult because she will not meet his eyes.

After their brains are racked and fuzzy with facts and figures and they have watched their entire marriage—birthdays and Christmases and children and late nights and family—summed up into possessions that were accordingly split into 'his' and 'hers', Bree politely walks their teams of lawyers to the door, smiling that frozen smile of hers that does not fade until the engines of cars are started and she closes the front door gently but firmly.

It is then that he pushes her hard against that same front door, catching his hand behind her head so that is does not slam against the dark wood, and kisses her fiercely because he'll be damned if he'll let their lawyers sum up their lives together into 'the house, the cars, the retirement plans, and the country club membership'.

To his surprise, she kisses him back just as fiercely, her fingers pulling through his hair, clawing at the back of his neck, and then tearing at his shirt until the fabric gives way beneath her eager hands.

He takes her right there, against the door, standing amidst a pile of hastily discarded clothing. Her moan is muffled by another fierce kiss when he enters her, his hands reaching under her thighs to hold her up and hold her against him so he can thrust hard and deep. It is angry, it is desperate, and it is passionate. She bites her lip hard to muffle a cry when she comes, leaning her head back against the door and closing her eyes to regain control, and he buries his face against her neck when he follows her, both still vaguely aware that their children are right upstairs waiting for them to say that the lawyers have left and they are allowed back downstairs.

Afterwards they dress in silence and neither mentions that that was the best sex they had had in years.

The second time is not as frenzied or harried, and this time it is after they signed the divorce papers and they are officially divorced, they are no longer husband and wife, they will no longer have and hold for richer and poorer and in sickness and in health, there is no need to forsake any, much less all, others, and Rex feels like it is as good as death that has parted them. They are no longer a unit. They are two separate individuals again. As though they had never been.

And he knows, in that moment, that he has to have her, that he wants her right then more than he had ever wanted her before, that he cannot and will not let her go yet.

And so he politely tells Lynette that he will take Bree home, and ignores Lynette's wary look and protests and instead takes his wife's—his ex-wife's—arm and leads her over to his car.

He knows she does not understand, still. She doesn't understand that he can cheat and say cruel things in the heat in the moment and wonder where the passion had gone, and yet still love her. She doesn't understand that she drives him crazy and sometimes he can barely stand her, but he always loved her. She doesn't understand that it took a heart attack for him to realize that there had to be another way for them to both be happy, together, that there had to be a better solution than giving up the woman he loved.

He knows for the first time in a long time what he wants, and yet that is not enough for her.

He kisses her even before they are in the door, and for once Bree does not point out or seem to even think about what the neighbors would think, because of course they all know that Rex and Bree Van de Kamp's court date is today. And yet here they are, kissing on the front porch of the home that is only Bree's now.

He carries her over the threshold and only stops for a moment to appreciate the irony of the fact that this is the sort of foolish thing that newlyweds do, and isn't it tradition, after all, for a new husband to carry his bride over the threshold? It is not the sort of thing that divorced people are supposed to do, but they do it anyway and this time he lays her down on the couch and takes the time to slowly, carefully, gently remove her heels and stockings and the clip from her hair and her pearls before unzipping the gray skirt that didn't suit her at all.

Afterwards they lay in a tangle of limbs, Bree's hand stroking his hair lightly. He breathes into her neck that he loves her, and she recoils as though he had slapped her. "Stop," she whispers and pushes him off of her. "Don't say things like that. Not now. It's too late for that now."

"Bree," he pleads as he reaches for his shirt. Somehow he thought that this would change things. He had thought that words whispered in the height of passion would hold more meaning than she is giving them.

"You told me you wanted a divorce. You came home with another woman's perfume on your coat. You threw me out of your hotel room and you called me a whore and all along you were having an affair." Bree angrily pulls on her stockings and Rex can only watch her helplessly. "And now you have what you want and we're divorced."

"You know it isn't what I want," he tells her fiercely. There are many things that Rex Van de Kamp wants, but he thinks that he probably wants his wife and his marriage back more than anything else.

Bree shrugs a bit and lowers her head, pulling her hair back up into a clip with shaky hands. "It's too late to turn back. You need to leave before the kids get back. And this…this won't happen again." He almost believes her.

The next day Bree goes to lunch with George Williams and he overhears neighbors murmur to each other that the Van de Kamp marriage must be really over, that it must have been over for a long time, if Bree would go on a date with another man the day after her divorce was finalized.

He does not see her for three weeks—when he comes to pick up the kids on the weekends she is upstairs or out to lunch or at Lynette's house. His children think that he asks about her to be polite, because she is still their children's mother, but he misses her. He even misses the annoying things that months ago he swore he could no longer live with, like her obsessive need to clean and her adoration of dinner parties. He misses having her around, and after eighteen years of marriage, being without Bree is not liberation as he once thought it would be. It is like a dull ache, a phantom pain, like something is missing and therefore everything is wrong.

He misses her, but he is beginning to learn how to live without her when she knocks on the door of his apartment three weeks later, a folder in hand. When she brushes past him to get in, he can smell his favorite perfume and he is lost all over again.

"You left these papers," she tells him, handing him the folder. "I, uh, didn't know if they were important. So I brought them over."

He thanks her and takes the folder and they look at each other for a long moment.

"You look tired," she says, her voice tender as she cups his cheek.

"I am," he admits, and he catches her hand. "I miss you."

He hears her catch a breath and she shakes her head slowly, even as his hands travel down to her hips, even as her hands lock around his neck and her mouth comes closer to his. He waits a moment, taking in the familiar feel of her body close to his, the gleam of her copper hair, the sweet smell of that perfume that she knows he loves, the smoothness of the skin right at the place where her skirt and her blouse meet.

"No," she whispers but then her lips are on his neck, her teeth scraping along his collarbone and her hands are crawling up under his shirt and along his back, and the word means nothing at all as they christen the bed in his new apartment. He bites her neck and knows he will leave a mark, and he hopes that the stupid pharmacist sees it. He hopes the stupid pharmacist knows that they may have both signed on the dotted line, but in the end this woman is still his.

He knows he is lucky to have her at all, that divorce normally doesn't and should not work this way. But he is greedy and does not want to share her with anyone. He thinks of George Williams putting his hands on Bree's body, and he feels his stomach clench as though he is going to be sick, so he pulls her close to him again, pinning her arms to the mattress as his lips travel down her body, his hands gripping her hips and pulling her up towards him.

_Mine.Mine.Mine.Mine. _

He smiles when she instinctively calls his name when she climaxes, and he bites down lightly on her earlobe and whispers that he loves her. He knows that if he would stop saying the words, she would maybe stay longer. She always leaves angry because he cannot help himself. Like the marks he leaves on her skin he wants the words to be branded in her mind, when she sees George, when she is home alone, when she is with her friends, she wants the sound of him saying that he loves her branded in his mind. Maybe if she hears it enough, she will start to believe it.

After she leaves he sees the papers she brought are from over a year ago, the date clearly printed at the top, and he smiles because he is not the only one who is clinging to something that should be legally, physically, and emotionally over.

It is then that he knows the truth—neither one of them can let go of the other, let go of their marriage. Bree is as trapped in this cycle of pushing away and pulling back as he is—it is just that he is the only one humble enough to admit it.

They meet when the children are in school, or when Bree is supposedly shopping or playing poker with her friends. He knows that she is still seeing George Williams and he knows that George Williams has no clue that his new girlfriend still ends up in the arms of her ex-husband. Rex is Bree's dirty little secret now, and yet he doesn't care. He just wants to be near her. He wants all of her, everything, all the time, but for now he will settle for what she is willing to give—stolen moments that no one can know about.

At one point, he notices several of his shirts have gone missing, and he smiles when he imagines her sleeping in them, and he smiles because his sheets smell like Bree. He smiles because Bree is as trapped in this cycle of pushing away and pulling back as he is—it is just that he is the only one humble enough to admit it.

Every time, he tells her he loves her and every time she says that they would not end up together again. Every time he knows she is lying but he breathes in the scent of her hair, just in case. In knows that most men would be happy to have a woman like Bree in their beds without any emotional baggage tied on, but he learned long ago that he is not like most men, and he thinks nothing would make him happier than her telling him that she wants their marriage back, their life together back. It is not about the sex—it was never about the sex. It is about her eyes. Her hair. Her voice. Just her presence, just having her there for the moment, something that he wishes he had not taken for granted. And so he knows he is a fool.

He is a fool still in love with his ex-wife, but she is a bigger fool for pretending that there is nothing at all.

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Again, please leave reviews! Part three, the final part, coming soon.


	3. Part Three: The Final Movement

Author's Notes: So, seriously, guys, this fic has over a hundred hits and three reviews from two reviewers. Some people have even put it on alert without leaving a review! So, please leave me a line, please?

Disclaimer: Desperate Housewives is not mine and no money is being made with this fanfic.

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**Anthem for the Broken Hearted**

_Every Story is a Love Story (Part Three: The Final Movement) _

Almost a year ago to the day, Bree Van de Kamp had swallowed her pride and resorted to desperate measures and had shown up at her husband's hotel room in a mink coat that covered new lacy red lingerie and that was it.

Being thrown out and driving home with that same mink coat wrapped tightly around her when she had thought that at that moment she would be resting in her husband's arms was the most humiliating experience of her life. Worse than her husband telling her she sounded like a whore, worse than him broadcasting their martial problems, worse than finding out he had had an affair and even worse than the whole town finding out that Rex Van de Kamp had visited the town prostitute.

It was at the moment that she had realized that she was perhaps no longer attractive or appealing to Rex. It was at the moment that she realized that she could make herself completely vulnerable to him and he could hurt her in the worst way possible.

And it was at the moment in her kitchen when he turned away from her again that she realized that she could do nothing to hold on to him, because she had already lost him.

In the months that had followed, leading up to their divorce, Bree had sworn that she would never, ever make herself vulnerable to Rex Van de Kamp again. Now she knows she is a liar.

They did not make a clean break of it. She can admit that. The first time could have been about goodbye but they keep coming back for more. And she cannot help herself. Sometimes she is so furious at him that all she wants is to be as close to him as possible so she can hurt him, biting her teeth into his neck and her nails into his back. And sometimes anger and lust gets so entangled that she can no longer tell one from the other and all she can do is claim him for her own.

Her relationship with her ex-husband is based on anger. And neither of them had ever dealt with anger well. And that is how she justifies it to herself. She has to tell herself that whenever they are together, things get out of control through no fault of her own. She dismisses the fact that Rex always has some of her favorite wine, even though it's Chardonnay and she knows he prefers whiskey. She pretends she does not know why she steals some of his shirts, and she pretends she does not know that he has noticed.

And she never listens when he tells her that he loves her and she pretends it does not happen.

Bree is good at pretending.

But a long time ago she swore she would never make herself vulnerable to her now-ex-husband again, and yet here she is, this time fully-clothed but still stripped of her power and her dignity and she has again swallowed her pride and come to him. She does not know why she chose Rex's apartment, but the alternative is going home and facing her children or worse, going to Lynette's and having Lynette blow what happened up into some big ordeal and Bree does not want the end of her relationship with George Williams to be the hot topic of the moment in the neighborhood.

Normally she calls Rex to say she is stopping by, always with a reason—she would claim she had found papers that she is sure he needs, that Danielle is missing a skirt and she thinks she may have left it at Rex's apartment when their children spent the weekend with their father. For a moment, she allows herself to imagine the worst, that Rex is in there with another woman or perhaps not there at all, and she is breaking the rules.

But she lifts her head as she did almost a year ago and knocks on the door with as much dignity as she can muster.

The door opens almost automatically, and Bree shrinks back a bit into the shadows of the hallway. Rex is looking scruffier than normal, unshaven and sleepy, and a brief mocking smile crosses her face when she realizes that Rex cleans himself up when she calls him to say she is coming over for whatever reason she has. It is power. And she needs it right now.

"Bree," he says, and she can tell he is surprised. "What are you doing here?"

They are the same words he said to her that day almost a year ago and is leaning in the doorframe _that way_ and Bree is almost all the way on the other side of the hallway now because it is familiar in a bad way.

She could parrot her words back at him, but instead she folds her arms defensively. "Is this a bad time?"

"No," he answers quickly. "Uh, no. Come in." And she does with her head turned a bit away from him because suddenly she is wishing that she had gone home instead. Finally she decides that she can't not look at her ex the entire time, so she takes the plunge and pushes back her red hair behind her ear, brushing her fingers lightly over the black bruise on her right eye, because the pain reminds her that it's there.

"Oh my God."

"It's nothing," she brushes him off. She takes off her coat and hangs it carefully on the hanger, along with her purse. She straightens them fussily so that she does not have to turn around and face him.

"The hell it's nothing," he snaps, shutting the door before walking over and taking her arm. The doctor in him takes over and he gently grasps her chin and tilts it back so he can get a better look at the bruising around her right eye. "What happened?"

She feels a flush of irritation, because when Rex acts like this she cannot pretend that they are simply sleeping together, with no strings attached. If she had wanted someone to coo and coddle and exclaim over her she could have visited Lynette or Susan. She pushes him back and pulls her face out of his grasp. "It's nothing," she repeats firmly. Her legs carry her towards the bedroom on their own accord.

"Andrew isn't giving you trouble, right?" he calls suspiciously as she disappears, and she sighs as she sits down on the bed and removes her heels and rolls down her stockings. She is determined, she is poised, and she is in control here.

"None more than usual," she answers honestly. Since Rex moved out things with Andrew are never simple with her son, but they are not anything out of the ordinary, nor anything Rex doesn't already know about.

He appears in the doorway with an ice pack in hand and she freezes midway through unbuttoning her blouse, and she hopes he does not see her hands trembling. He brought an ice pack. And he is looking at her with a sort of horrified expression on her face and so she smiles in that come-hither way that she had perfected in eighteen years of marriage, and yet his expression never changes. And this makes her want to hurtle her shoe at him because he does not want her perfumed and made-up with pearls and strappy high-heels and red lingerie but he does not want her marked, either, less-than-perfect and slightly bruised and worn for wear, and she still does not know what the _hell _Rex Van de Kamp wants. And it is times like this that she begins to fear that the answer is simply 'not her'.

"I deserved it." She does not want him to think that she is a hapless victim, she does not want him to conjure images of her as a damsel in distress. She is a terrible, terrible person who was being untrue to a nice man and if she had been George Williams she would have hit her, too.

Rex's face crinkles with anger, and she knows he is putting two and two together. "You and every other woman who comes into our ER in the hospital with a broken neck or a shattered rib," he replies tightly and Bree rolls her eyes at his melodramatics.

"I didn't come here for you to be my knight-in-shining armor," she says harshly and she tugs at her blouse impatiently. A button pops off and rolls away and she watches it with a feeling of foreboding because now truly everything is ruined and out of control. She is wearing green underneath and she is glad because it matches her eyes and because green is as far away from red as you can get.

"Well what did you expect?" Rex asks, and his voice is rising and Bree feels a flutter of triumph in her stomach because anger is what their relationship is based on and it is good to know that they are back on track. "Am I supposed to be okay with some creep smacking you around? Did you expect to just show up here with a black eye and have me say 'Oh, nice to see you, nice day, now drop your skirt'?"

She flinches because talking about it is not part of the deal. It is supposed to just 'happen', they are supposed to be making a mistake and every time is supposed to the last, and she tells him so every time. It isn't supposed to be planned or expected, and she knows how foolish this sounds even in her own mind when she is sitting on his bed with her heels and stockings in a pile on the ground and her blouse unbuttoned.

"He told me he loved me," she admits and her voice trembles slightly. "And it was nice for awhile but then he started…he suspected…he asked if I had seen you. And he kept asking questions and it just came out…" she trails off.

"So he hit you," he replies coldly.

"I deserved it," Bree reaffirms, and cannot resist giving a below-the-belt hit. "You wouldn't know what it's like to know someone you love is sleeping with someone else." Because when she feels like this, like she is whoring herself out, like she is a terrible person who did a terrible thing to a nice man who happened to do a terrible thing in response, she needs to remind him that he is worse than she is.

"Damn it, Bree!" he swears and slams his hand against the doorframe for emphasis. She folds her arms across her chest defensively. "Will you just stop? Stop being so damn stubborn and so damn _stupid_! Stop putting yourself in bad situations where you're going to be hurt because you're still clinging to this twisted idea that I need to be punished."

She stands now, staring at him. She wants to laugh at him, but she cannot summon the sound, and her voice is strangled when she asks, "Is that what you think, Rex? You think I divorced you and started seeing George without knowing that it would end badly to punish you? To teach you a lesson?"

He glares at her and she can feel the heat from across the room. "It's as good as an explanation as any."

"You are so delusional," she hisses, taking a few steps towards him even though she knows it is dangerous because she can feel that familiar twisting of lust in the pit of her stomach. "This is just a game to you, isn't it, Rex? You think that when I think you've learned your lesson you'll be able to move back into your comfortable home and settle back into your comfortable life?"

"Well, what am I supposed to think?" he yells back. "I don't know what the hell you're doing! You date George Williams and file for divorce and yet we always end up the same way! What the hell am I supposed to think?"

Bree narrows her eyes. "I don't hear you complaining about how we spend our time," she snips, and she throws the clip in her hair violently to the ground.

"_Well I'm not the one who wanted a divorce, am I?_" he shouts and she cannot believe he thinks it's that simple, that he decided he could just change his mind about leaving her and she is supposed to go along with it, and he thinks that she divorced him to teach him a lesson about fidelity. She wishes that was all it was—a lesson.

She wishes she could cut out the part of her heart that he owned, but she is afraid that if she did that, she would have nothing remaining afterwards.

"Maybe not anymore!" she snaps. "You certainly did a few months ago!"

"And you didn't," he says bitterly. "Things change, huh? I guess me learning my lesson is more important than trying to save our marriage."

"So you think I got a divorce to _punish you_?" Her voice is getting hoarse from yelling and she knows her face is turning red with anger, but she can feel that familiar throbbing of lust that lets her know that this argument will end as all their arguments do now, with her flat on her back.

"_Why else_?" And at this she is so tired of him being so delusional and self-centered, and of course, this is all about Rex, everything is always all about Rex, Rex is always the martyr and poor, poor Rex. She almost wants to spit at him, but instead she comes in close, her hand clenching his shirt and pulling him towards her so he will be sure to hear what she says.

"_Because you broke my heart_!" she yells, now only inches away from him. "You broke my heart and you broke me and you broke our family and some stupid black eye is nothing, _nothing _compared to that! And I _trusted _you and now I can't seem to move on but I can't turn back because I can never trust you again!"

He reaches out and grasps her arms, pulling her a bit closer and she feels her breath catch in her throat as she instinctively presses her body to his.

"Then why did you come here?" he demands. "Why did you come here for me to take care of you, instead of going to Lynette's, or even Gabrielle's or Susan's? If you can never trust me again, Bree, what are you _doing _here?"

She is stunned for a moment but she tells himself that he's wrong, he's _wrong_, he's always wrong. "I didn't come here for you to take care of me," she hisses, evading the question, and she kisses him because it is either kiss him or hit him, one arm looping around his neck, her nails digging hard against his shoulder.

She does not know why she comes back for more. She has run through every possibility in her head, and now she is beginning to wonder if it is the taboo of it, if the fact that they are supposed to move on past each other makes him irresistable to him and her to him. She thinks that might be the right explanation, because he was so easily able to turn her away while they were married. Of course, he was getting his kicks elsewhere at the time. He still might be.

The thought makes her angry and she moves her mouth to his neck, biting hard on the curve where neck meets shoulder. He hisses, almost cat-like, and she knows she has won when he tips his head back against her eager mouth and his hands lock onto her hips. She has won again and he still wants her, he is still hers and she is still in control. She lets him walk her backwards towards the bed, sighing with contentment as his mouth finds hers.

She smiles against his mouth when she feels her back hit the mattress, her hands slipping under the back of his shirt and taking in the warmth of his skin.

But then he pulls away and she watches with eyes wide with confusion as he moves off of her, reaching over to the nightstand where he had put the ice pack that he had brought into the bedroom with him.

She flinches as he gently presses the ice pack against her eye, startled.

"See," he says almost conversationally, one hand on the ice pack on her eye and the other on her left cheek to keep her head steady. "I think you did."

She feels her breath catch in her throat, and she slides her hand a bit lower, sliding her fingertips just underneath the top of his pants and running them back and forth tantilizingly, smiling up at him. But his expression never changes and his hands do not move, the hands not of a husband or an ex-husband but of a doctor.

And her breath comes a bit quicker, this time from panic rather than arousal because he doesn't want her, he doesn't want her anymore, the realization as striking as it was that night in his motel, and yet all the more horrifying this time around. Because he will send her home and she will never see him except for a casual hello when he comes to pick up the kids on the weekends, a few minutes of polite conversation on the holidays. She had lost her appeal as a wife and now she has lost her appeal as an ex-wife.

And she is in her kitchen again, knowing that she lost him, and she knows this time she lost him for good. There is nothing she hadn't tried during their marriage, and now the post-marriage desire has faded. She has lost him and now she doesn't even have George anymore who at least made her think maybe, maybe she was still interesting and attractive. Now she's alone. Now she's lost all power because he does not want her anymore.

She doesn't realize that she is crying until she feels Rex's thumb on her cheek, brushing away tears. And once she realizes she has already begun she cannot stop. She has not cried since her divorce. She has not cried since Rex had had his heart attack. She has not cried since she had realized that everything was lost and her marriage was finished. There have been times, of course, where she has come close but she has always had far more important things to do than cry but at the moment she cannot think of any of those things, and so she cries. And she hates that it is not quiet and dignified crying but loud and painful, sharp cries as though she is in physical pain. And she is sure that her face is turning red and splotchy and swollen but she simply cannot stop and when Rex sights and moves the ice pack back onto the nightstand and pulls her into his arms she buries her face against his chest so at least he cannot see her.

She can remember the last time she cried, months ago, but she cannot remember the last time she cried in front of Rex, or anyone else for that matter. It is both embarrassing and comforting at the same time. The feeling of his chest rising and falling beneath her cheek, the warmth of flesh underneath the cotton of his shirt is almost disconcerting after months and years of the cool flannel of her sheets and the unsympathetic yielding of her pillow, the sole witnesses to any heartache or pain that she would reluctantly release in a moment of weakness.

But his arms hold her tightly and hold her together and she does not feel, as she often does when she finds herself unable to go on for another moment, as though she will simply disappear in grief and despair, vanish away. And his hand is tangled in her hair, pressing her close to him, and she will probably have to work to get out all the knots but she has soaked straight through his shirt and so it feels like a fair trade-off. And his lips seem to burn through her skin when he presses them to the top of her head.

"It's okay," he reassures her. "You're okay."

And she laughs through her tears because he has never been more wrong in his life—it is not okay and she is not okay and nothing will ever be okay again. She cannot move forward and she cannot move back and she will always be trapped in this inbetween of what was and is no longer and what will be.

He doesn't speak again until she has finally cried herself dry and is only left raw and empty, a shell of a woman. She doesn't know what to do now that all that agony inside of her is out in the room, spreading and consuming and leaving her with nothing. She is still in his arms.

"We really screwed this up, didn't we?" he asks thickly, and Bree doesn't know if he's asking her or asking himself. "Somewhere along the line, we just…we really lost each other."

And if she wasn't so mentally and emotionally exhausted, she probably would have snippily pointed out that he had screwed up and they had lost each other when he had decided to leave a personal check on Maisy Gibbons' bedstand. But she is so tired and his arms are so warm that she does not want to fight, not now. "Yes," she agrees softly.

He does not tell her then, as he so often does, that he loves her, but she can almost feel it, it's in the room with her pain and they fight for dominance and she wonders if they can co-exist. But then she knows that they can because she has learned that there cannot be love without pain. And normally she would cringe away and leave because she has to pretend that there are no messy emotions left between them, but it seems foolish to try and pretend that when she has just spent ten minutes sobbing into his chest.

She pulls away a bit, lifting her face up, and she can see that his white shirt is now stained black. She raises her hand to her left eye and wipes away some of the mascara and eyeliner smudged there, and realizes she probably looks like she has two black eyes now. "Sorry," she mumbles, wiping at his shirt. She concentrates on trying to turn the shirt back to white because it is something detached, something she can hold to that won't hurt her, something that keeps her grounded and keeps her safe and sane. And yet she cannot get her mascara off no matter how furiously she wipes.

He catches her hand, stilling it before putting his arm back around her. "Don't worry about it."

"It'll be ruined."

"It's just a shirt. More important things have been ruined."

She feels more stripped naked now, her makeup smeared across Rex's shirt, and her hair a mess, than she ever did in red lingerie. "I should go," she whispers, and she scrambles off the bed, reaching with trembling hands for her discarded stockings. She tries to pull them on but they run under her shaky grasp.

She stares at them with a sort of detached shock. To top it all off, her stockings are ruined. She pulls them back off and crumples them up, searching for the wastebacket to depose of them in.

"Bree."

"Did you give up on throwing things away since you moved in here?" she snaps uneasily, still searching.

"Bree," he repeats, approaching her. He rests a hand on her shoulder and she tries to ignore it as she slides on her heels, feeling them rub uncomfortablely against her bare feet. She is leaving. She is leaving before he can ask her to leave. She may have lied to herself about making herself vulnerable to him again, but she will never stay around long enough for him to tell her to leave again. "Stay tonight."

Her fingers slip as she tries to rebutton her blouse and she curses her incompetance. "No."

"Why not?"

She takes a deep breath as she reworks the buttons. "Rex," she says tiredly. "What do you want from me?" She tries to ignore his hands on her hips now, his breath warm against her neck.

"I just…I want to know what we're doing, Bree," he whispers. "I can't do this anymore. I can't…stay in this place anymore. We need to either move forward together or go our separate ways. I can't keep hoping that everytime you come you've come back for good. I either need to have you or move on. I want to know what's going on…between us. What's going to happen?"

"Does it matter which?" she spits bitterly, and his fingers rub against her hip bone comfortingly, his lips pressing against her temple.

"Yes," he says hoarsely. "It does. Does it matter to you?"

"I don't know," she mumbles, shaking her head. "Yes. I…" She turns swiftly and takes him by surprise, hitting him hard in the middle of his chest, ignoring his shout of indigination. "I would have done anything you wanted! Why did you have to cheat on me? Why did you have to ruin everything?" It is making everything too simple, she knows, summing up all their marriage problems in the fact that Rex had cheated on her. But it was what made her decide that she did not want to try and save their marriage any longer.

Rex opens his mouth as though he is going to argue and she feels her face crumple a bit because she is so _tired. _She knows she will not cry because she has no tears left. Rex sighs at the sight of the expression on her face, and pulls her into an embrace.

"Just stay tonight, okay?" And she doesn't pull away because his arms are warm and comforting and her head fits just right on his shoulder, her face buried against his neck, all moves and touches practiced and perfected. "Stay tonight and we can…we can talk tomorrow. We need to talk."

She sighs heavily, feeling the fight leave her at the gentle caress of his hands over her back. "Okay," she agrees weakly.

She sits back down on the bed and pulls off her shoes and half-buttoned blouse, barely noticing in that oh-so-married way as Rex changes. He hands her one of his shirts, and she pulls it on before discarding of her skirt. The shirt is big but she is comfortable in it—she has always liked wearing his clothes to sleep in but had decided somewhere around their eighth year of marriage that that was simply foolish and childish of her.

She had recently begun wearing his shirts to sleep again but she doesn't tell him that.

It feels odd, sleeping in the same bed with Rex again. Their relationship had been so strained before their divorce and so odd afterwards that doing something as simple as sleeping in the same bed feels out of place to her. And uncomfortable. It is something married people are supposed to do. She has almost, reluctantly, gotten used to sleeping alone and it is unsettling to feel the dip in the mattress right next to her, the sound of breathing near her ear.

She kicks when his foot brushes against hers, perhaps accidently, perhaps not. "Your feet are cold," she says grumpily, and she can almost feel him smile even with her back to him.

His hand settles comfortably on her hip, a touch too familiar. It is almost hard to remember that they are not back three years ago before everything started falling apart, and she touches the cotton sheets to remind herself that she is in a different place, away from their martial bed with the flannel sheets. "We can think of something tomorrow," he says encouragingly, and she sighs tiredly because she doesn't believe him.

"If you say so."

"I love you," he says, and she hates the way he says it, so easily, calmly, as though he is still supposed to say it or feel that way, as though it's okay. As though he has said it to her every day of his life, as though she didn't spend the last six months of their marriage wondering _does he love me? Does he still love me? _

She closes her eyes painfully. "I know," she admits rawly. She does know now. She knows too late. She knows when it doesn't matter because he could love her and hurt her and never stop. He could betray her and declare his love for her to another woman in the same breath. He loves her. But she has learned love is not always, is often not, enough. "…me too," she whispers, and it hurts to say it, but is a release at the same time, just as her tears have been.

She wonders if he heard her when he does not answer, but then his hand slides around her waist, pulling her up closer against him, his lips pressing briefly against her neck.

Tomorrow they will have to face the reality that they, together, have ruined everything. They are still divorced. They are still in a twisted relationship that is wrong and upside-down in about ten different ways. Things are not okay. Things may never be okay.

This, she realizes, may be their last night together. At this thought, she rolls over, burying her face against his neck like she did so many times when they were married and happy. This may be the last time she can pretend those days aren't long gone.

Tomorrow, Rex had told her. Tomorrow they will either move forward or go their separate ways. And she, at least, does not know if they even have separate ways anymore. Eighteen years of being Rex-and-Bree have erased any semblance of individuality, of independent journeys.

Tomorrow everything could be over or everything could begin.

But tonight she will sleep.

'_every story new or ancient_

_bagatelle or work of art_

_all are tales of human failings_

_all are tales of love…at heart.' _

--

The ending verse is from 'Every Story is a Love Story' from the musical Aida. I know the ending to this fic is kind of open-ended, but that's how it's intended to be. There won't be a part four.

Like I said, I'd really, really appreciate some reviews! I have quite a few more Brex fics up my sleeve but there's really not a point in posting them if no one's reading/enjoying them. -(


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